


I Am Trying to Break Your Heart

by indevan



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Alternate Universe - Rock Band, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Drug Use, Family Issues, Interpersonal Issues, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Trans Felix Hugo Fraldarius, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:21:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26078662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indevan/pseuds/indevan
Summary: He, Ingrid, and Sylvain were entwined no matter what.  They had been playing together since they were teenagers, back when Dimitri still played guitar with them and they called themselves BOAR, not Killing Edge
Relationships: Felix Hugo Fraldarius/Sylvain Jose Gautier
Comments: 16
Kudos: 43
Collections: Sylvix Big Bang





	I Am Trying to Break Your Heart

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so happy to finally get to share this fic with everyone! This AU is the brainchild of me and [Dima](http://twitter.com/dmisunbreakdable) and I get to be the one to share the first little bit with everyone :D
> 
> a slight warning, though, that isn't really covered in tags, but there is an allusion/reference to a past abortion in the fic. It isn't major, nor is it dwelled on, but it would be remiss for me not to warn people ahead of time
> 
> Anyway, thank you in advance anyone who reads this. I'm so, so grateful for the people who encouraged me during the process of this fic, especially when I was getting down on myself with it. Wei, Dima, Elliot, Evie, everyone who gave me encouragement: thank you so so much!
> 
> here is also a short [playlist](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/50CZkNr8o7lpjXmATQB2f7?si=l2YcR7KyR2e-CtH76zhqWw) specifically for this fic
> 
> And a special thank you to [Michi](http://twttier.com/RequiemPluie), who created the beautiful illustrations for this fic!

Felix sometimes wondered what other people thought of him. They were fleeting thoughts, but they came all the same. Especially now, nearing half past one in the morning in the same liver red vinyl booth he had been sitting in for the past several hours at this retro throwback diner deep in the bowels of the city. It was under the train tracks, but he had stopped hearing trains hours ago. He felt remote, on his own. How he liked it. Maybe.

He sipped from the coffee in front of him. He didn’t particularly need it to stay awake, but he periodically ordered things to prolong his purpose of being in this diner. He wasn’t the only night owl here. Felix wasn’t sure if he would feel bad or not if he was. He wasn’t sure of a lot.

Maybe that was why he toyed with the thought of people pondering at the sight of him. Strangers. He wasn’t used to those. He had run in the same circles his entire life. Nearly, anyway. Even here in the local scene, everyone knew him and he knew nearly everyone. Every now and then a new band would come about, but usually the lineup was made up of at least one or two people he had known. Like that new band, Mockingbird or whatever. Their lead singer used to play with Ashe Ubert-Gaspard from Postscript and their keyboardist had been in Death Knight before back when Mercedes von Martriz--also from Postscript--was still with them. And their drummer, of course, everyone remembered from Holst Goneril’s old band, Throat. Felix rarely got to see himself in the eyes of someone new. Dimitri didn’t count. More than five years apart couldn’t quell the years and years of history, no matter how hard Felix tried.

What did the people in this diner see?

They probably didn’t see much, the way he was hunched over the booth, staring into the dark depths of his coffee. He was wearing a white, blue, and yellow track jacket that brought to mind his favorite anime character, but if people didn’t get it on the first guess, he wouldn’t tell them who it was. His hair was scraped back and tied into a ponytail that bopped around his head whenever he moved.

He looked at the sticky, laminated menu tucked behind the condiment caddy and thought about ordering more than just coffee to stay longer. The diner was open twenty-four hours and it wasn’t busy, but they could still ask him to leave and stop taking up space. Felix knew this story. They would tell him to leave, he’d snap at them, and then they would have to add another place to the list of “restaurants where Felix isn’t welcome” that was scrawled on a piece of paper and stuck to their refrigerator.

Felix pressed his fingertips against his lids and breathed deeply in through his nose. He was too used to being nocturnal that on nights where he didn’t perform, he didn’t know what to do with himself. He didn’t tell anyone where he was going, because who cared? They were at a bar downtown. At least Sylvain was. He would get irrevocably fucked up and pass out in his bed some time around dawn, likely with his limbs falling most of the way off of the mattress. And served him right. Felix had maybe been thinking about resuming their quasi-sort of relationship that night, but Sylvain had taken off to get loaded and so he changed his mind. Not that it mattered. He and Sylvain were always there for each other when they needed it. Felix never made any grand declarations when he wanted to get back together (whatever that “together” really entailed). He would always simply walk into Sylvain’s room, get in his bed, and reach down his sweatpants to pull out his cock.

He watched the door of the diner from his position in the booth. He wasn’t hoping for Sylvain to come in and put some money down for Felix’s cup of coffee. Wasn’t hoping for him to take his hand and take him home. Felix had long since given up on them having any sort of real relationship. The last time they had been in anything resembling one was back when they were teenagers. And look how that turned out.

No, he wasn’t hoping for him to show up now. Felix took the spoon the server had brought him and stirred his coffee violently. It splashed out of the mug and onto the table. He looked at the spilled coffee and tried to make out some sort of shape. Some sort of meaning. He nearly snorted to himself. Right. The only meaning here was that Felix Hugo Fraldarius should go the fuck to sleep.

There was a jukebox here, playing songs seemingly at random. It was an old one with wooden panels and neon tube lighting. Right now, Buddy Holly’s hiccuping voice assured the tired, worn down patrons that every day a love like yours will  _ surely _ come their way. Felix scowled into his warped reflection in his spoon.

The door to the diner opened, signaled by a bell strung to the top of it, but he didn’t look up. Why should he?

Halfheartedly, he dabbed at the spilled coffee with a napkin from the metal dispenser on the table. He watched the dark liquid soak through the thin paper, still hot to the touch. He was about to consider looking at the menu again, when he was aware of a presence at his table.

“Felix?”

The “What?” that was on his tongue, prepared for the server, died when he realized whoever was here knew his name. He thought of Sylvain, but banished it almost immediately. He wouldn’t come here, and this voice belonged to a woman.

Dorothea stood at the edge of the table, her hands on her hips. She was dressed in deep reds and blacks, and her hair smelled like fragrant clove cigarettes. Felix figured that that meant that she had come from that goth club where her girlfriend’s band played. Sourly, he thought that she should have stayed there.

“What the fuck do you want?”

Dorothea screwed her face up for a moment. Her features smoothed back out but there was still a turn at her mouth that showed that she was already done with him. That was no surprise. That was almost always the look Dorothea gave him.

“I came to get you.”

That didn’t sound right. Felix curled his lip.

“How did you even know I was here?”

She changed her posture to a bit of a slouch and put her hand behind her neck. Felix had to give her one thing: she was a good actress. Before she even began her impersonation, he knew that she was channeling Sylvain.

“‘Felix goes to late night diners. Find a twenty-four hour one that’s walking distance from the apartment ‘cause he hates taking the train and hates taxis more when they’re not running.’”

Felix didn’t bother fighting back the scowl that was worming its way onto his face. Even as inevitably fucked up as Sylvain was tonight, he knew him so well. Inside and out.

“Why are you getting me?” he asked rather than say any of that.

Dorothea righted herself and shrugged. “I drew the short straw.”

He couldn’t tell if she was joking or not. Dorothea waited for him while he sorted his bill for the coffee and he felt a bit like he was being babysat. Bad enough that he had to be picked up.

“Sylvain’s worried about you,” she said once they were out in the chill of the night.

Felix zipped his jacket up to his chin and shrugged.

“Is he?”

“As far as I can tell. He’s pretty far gone.”

He could imagine. Nearly every night, Sylvain got loaded. Sometimes he went onstage after guzzling a water bottle full of some dark brown liquor. He kept another next to his mic stand and, more than once, he had nearly fallen face first off of the stage in the middle of a number because he was too fucked up. Dorothea, also more than once, called him a liability. It made Felix sometimes wonder why she stuck around.

He, Ingrid, and Sylvain were entwined no matter what. They had been playing together since they were teenagers, back when Dimitri still played guitar with them and they called themselves BOAR, not Killing Edge. When he and Felix sat for hours, perfecting their craft, taking what Glenn taught them and then going further. But Dorothea could be in any band she wanted. She burst onto the scene from an opera background of all things. She played with Dedue Molinaro before he joined Postscript--and how everything came back to  _ that _ fucking band, Felix often thought. Dorothea had her pick of anyone who had an opening for someone who could sing and play as well as her. He knew their band’s reputation. They were a mess, they were a shitshow. Sylvain aside, Felix knew he was often scrutinized for his attitude. It didn’t bother him, though. His attitude was other people’s problems, wasn’t it?

Felix squinted against the darkness as if it would help. The buzzing lighting in the diner had been so bright and now everything was dark. There were bits of light. Neon signs flashing in windows that weren’t turned off when the storefront closed. The light behind him from the diner, its own neon coating him in Dorothea in syruppy, raspberry-colored light. Felix suddenly yearned for a cigarette, even though he had stopped smoking back in high school. Not that he ever even smoked regularly, then. Unlike Sylvain who never found a vice he didn’t want to partake in. Felix rubbed at the skin under his eyes and yawned. The cups of coffee that he had stretched throughout hours weren’t doing their job. Shitty diner coffee.

“My car’s parked over there. I didn’t pay the meter so let’s hurry.”

Felix trudged after her to where an ancient Tercel was parked. He waited at the passenger side for her. Dorothea unlocked her side and then crawled across the front seat to unlock Felix’s door. He climbed in and buckled in. Dorothea started the ignition and pulled onto the vacant road. The radio crackled to life with the cassette put in the stereo. Felix didn’t know they could still legally sell cars with a cassette player. Sylvain had bought an old car with his own money, but it at least could play CDs.

“What is this?” he said, curling his lip at her music choice.

“Bauhaus,” she answered easily. “I drove Edie home after her show before I came to get your sorry ass.”

Felix sneered at her even if he distantly knew that he ought to be grateful that someone came for him. The man on the ancient cassette warbled about Bela Lugosi being dead followed by a long and tired dirge. It dragged on Felix’s bones and he found himself looking out the fogged up window as they drove.

“Do you want to talk about anything?”

He didn’t know if Dorothea was asking to be polite or because she genuinely wanted to help, but Felix didn’t care either way.

“No.”

\--

Watery morning light came through the slats in Sylvain’s blinds and he groaned. With his eyes squeezed shut, he reached for his blanket to pull over his head. His hand faltered in midair and he let it drop. He opened his eyes slowly, shielding them with that hand like a visor. His memory of the night before was patchy, but he was certain that he brought someone home with him. His bed was vacant of anyone but himself. Who had he brought home?

There had been a girl at the bar who had come up and grabbed his bicep. She’d looked at him and said, “Are you the lead singer of Killing Edge?” and he’d answered that he was. She then asked about the rumors of his pierced dick and Sylvain had offered to show her. They’d gone into the bathroom, so maybe he thought to take her home as well.

_ No, wait… _

After they had left the bathroom, she had fixed her hair and dress and left. It hadn’t been her. Foggy recollections of walking down the sidewalk with his arm around the shoulders of a nameless, faceless man as he told Dorothea over the phone to go get Felix from whatever diner he inevitably ran off to sulk in. Right. Must have been him. Sylvain sniffed his sheets and, sure enough, he smelled unfamiliar body spray. Mystery solved.

Figuring out who had spent the night did nothing for his hangover, though. Sylvain groaned and slowly dragged himself out of bed. Life really did go downhill after you turned twenty-five. He didn’t used to get hangovers. Didn’t used to get drunk either, really. Back in high school, Dimitri used to say, “Sylvain doesn’t get drunk. He drinks until he passes out.” A fair assessment for the time.

He had somehow had the forethought to put his underwear on before he finally conked out for the night, which was good. He didn’t want to hear another earful from Ingrid about walking around naked. Not that it wasn’t anything she hadn’t seen before, but he also knew better than to bring that up.

The main living area of their apartment was empty, which added to the fact that Sylvain really had no idea what time it was. He probably should have checked his phone for that, but he was too hungover and, besides, he hated checking it first thing in the morning. Miklan could have texted him or called him to say that he was coming round to ask for money or to generally ruin Sylvain’s day. He liked to send those messages when he was asleep to fuck with him from the jump. His brother was somehow an even bigger waste of space than he was, which was quite the feat. Not that he’d ever say that to him. He would always just pass over some cash to get him to leave without many words exchanged. Sometimes Miklan grabbed it too quickly, just to watch him flinch.

He trudged around the counter to get to their small kitchen and get some food in him. And maybe some pickle juice, if they had a jar in the fridge. And ibuprofen. And maybe a beer. Anything to stop the pounding his head and erase the dead animal taste in his mouth.

A sticky note was on the fridge next to the list of restaurants where Felix wasn’t allowed to go to. He recognized Ingrid’s sharp, neat handwriting that looked like a typeface.

_ Dipshit - I used the last of the frozen pancakes to make breakfast for your conquest before he left. You OWE me. _

That sounded like her. Sylvain opened the freezer to confirm that, yes, the bag of frozen pancakes was gone. There had only been a couple left, anyway. Felix ate them frozen whenever he’d had too much to drink. So, in reality,  _ Felix _ ought to buy more, but he couldn’t make that case without Ingrid here for him to  _ make _ that case at all.

He tried the fridge next and it looked equally pitiful. One bottle of beer and no pickles in sight. Despite his earlier thoughts, Sylvain’s stomach lurched at the sight of it. Maybe no hair of the dog just yet. The cupboards were also pretty bare--a sign that they would have to go shopping. Finally, he found a can of ravioli tucked behind half a bag of flour (and why did they even have flour? No one baked). Sylvain held it and glanced at the microwave before deciding against it. He fished around the drawer for a can opener. The only one he could find was an ancient metal one that may have been in the apartment when they moved in, but it was better than nothing. He shoved the tip in and cranked it around until the lid was off enough for him to fold it back and reveal the revolting insides.

_ My life is this can of ravioli, _ he thought.

He knew that was self-piteous and “woe is me,” but he also knew that he wasn’t wrong. Here he was at question mark o’clock in the day, standing in his kitchen in his underwear, eating canned ravioli with his fingers while nursing a massive hangover. If that didn’t encapsulate his existence in a single image, he didn’t know what would.

Sylvain always knew he was a fuck-up by design. His mother said it sometimes, sighing with weariness at both of her children. She blamed herself, he knew, for the way that he and Miklan turned out. Of course his father would never blame himself. As a kid, Sylvain had been the golden boy. The good boy to Miklan’s bad boy. He was seven years younger than his brother and before Sylvain had even hit puberty, Miklan had already been arrested twice. Imagine his family’s disappointment when Sylvain wound up being a useless wastoid himself. He would always tell his parents “hey, at least I’m not a criminal!” whenever his father would frown or his mother would get that worried line between her brows. And what better place for a fuck-up than in a rock band?

The four of them had felt invincible as teenagers, wielding their instruments like swords and lances, taking the garages and birthday parties of the town by storm. They even played a bar once or twice, even if they weren’t old enough to be in there, let alone old enough to drink. That was Glenn’s doing. He had been in the local scene and let his little brother’s band open for them. Glenn, a proper big brother. Literally too good for this world.

One of the other two bedrooms opened and Felix shuffled out in his slides. His hair was down and he had on a sweatshirt and pair of boxers.

“Hey,” Sylvain said.

Felix grunted at him in response. He tried again.

“Dorothea got you home in one piece. Good. I was worried.” He stuck his fingers into the can and caught a ravioli between them like a fish. He brought it to his mouth.

He vaguely remembered wanting to go get Felix himself, even with the boy hanging off of him, stroking his chest, but he hadn’t trusted himself in the city as fucked up as he was. Dorothea had called after the Crimson Midnight show asking after them so he gave it to her. Good, dependable Dorothea.

In any event, he was glad that Felix was back. Even if he was glaring at him through a curtain of blue-black hair.

“You should have come and gotten me yourself if you were so worried.”

As with a lot of things Felix said, it was stated sourly. Sylvain tucked his lower lip beneath his upper one. Shit. Maybe that was right, but when they weren’t together (and oftentimes even when they were), he never knew where he stood with Felix. Sometimes he thought that he loved him, but he had thought that a long time ago, too, and look where that had led them.

The silence stretched between them, tension almost crackling in the air. After an eternity, Felix huffed air out through his nose.

“I was going to come see you when I got home, but I saw your bed was full.”

The implication was obvious. Felix had entertained getting back together. Sylvain didn’t know if he wanted that or not, but he always welcomed the touch. Felix was the only person who he let touch him first. With everyone else he had ever been with, Sylvain was the one to initiate. Sometimes people could surprise him with a touch and he would flinch and lock up. But never with Felix. He never tried to think too hard about what that meant.

He didn’t get a chance to say anything in response, because Felix took the opportunity to leave the kitchen and the apartment, shutting the door forcefully but not enough to slam. The sound punctured a hole in the cotton surrounding his head. Sylvain screwed his face up and groaned. Maybe he did need that beer. He looked down at the can of ravioli and even  _ that _ seemed to be judging him.

_ Fuck. _

\--

On some level, Felix thought that he didn’t really have a reason to be mad at Sylvain, but anger was something welcoming, something he was used to. When he couldn’t feel anything after Glenn’s death, when the numbing cold aftermath threatened to snap his bones and freeze his heart, anger was what he clung to. Anger was accessible. Anger was easy. Even when the anger got so bad he could almost taste it, sharp and metallic in his throat, and hot against the backs of his eyes.

Being angry at Sylvain was easy and better to focus on than wishing that he hadn’t said what he said. He had come home last night, feeling the caffeine flux of being wired and exhausted at once and some part, deep in the limbic center of his brain, wanted to be held. Felix hadn’t known where it came from, but he stood in their living room, his knees quivering, and wanted someone’s arms around him. He wanted  _ Sylvain’s _ arms around him. Had it been a regular hour and he hadn’t spent the last few hours sitting in the liminal space that was an all-night diner, things might have been different. But it wasn’t. It was so late that it was nearly early, and he was tired and his ears rang from the pain pitch that Dorothea had cranked her radio to to drown out the silence in the car.

Before he had even gotten to his door, though, Felix could hear him, them. Whatever. He knew what sounds Sylvain made when he was having sex. It varied depending on his level of sobriety, but he knew them like the back of his hand. The wistful feeling of longing petered into tired anger and he had just gone to his own bed. But he didn’t have to tell Sylvain that. It sounded vulnerable and Felix didn’t  _ do _ vulnerable. He was tough as metal. Steel. Vulnerability never did him any favors. He remembered sobbing outside the convenience store with all of the squalling sirens and swirling lights, unable to relay his story to a police officer about what happened because one moment he and Dimitri were sharing a Slurpee and sticking their tongues out at each other to show each other how blue they were and the next his brother was dead. Later, balling his fists into the sweatshirt Sylvain wore while they sat on hard, nicotine-yellow plastic chairs in a clinic, waiting for his name to be called.

He never let his guard down, he refused. He would lock himself up and push and push and no one could break him.

Felix drew in a deep breath and let his hand fall to his side, index and middle finger naturally separating from his ring finger and pinky as if he were holding a cigarette. He quit some time back in his teens, but sometimes went through the motions to calm himself down. Lifting his fingers to his lips, exhaling. He would never let anyone see him do it, but it worked better than any breathing exercises people tried to force on him. He ought to go back inside. It was getting colder and colder each day as December lurched on, and he wasn’t wearing any proper pants. He at least had had the forethought to put socks on before he slipped into his slides and trudged into the kitchen to glare at Sylvain who had no business looking as good as he did while hunched over with a hangover headache and eating fucking ravioli out of a can with his hands like an animal.

But that was the way Sylvain was and how Felix had felt that sort of pull to him. When they were younger, as everyone always pointed out, he used to chase him around various backyards, loudly declaring his intentions to marry him. At the time, all the parents thought it was  _ so cute. _ Glenn, who could be a right bastard when he wanted to be, even asked if he still wanted to marry Sylvain when Felix came to him and told him he was a boy.

Felix brought his fingers to his mouth and dropped them. He blew air gently through his lips and rolled his shoulders back. His phone, which he had shoved in the waistband of his boxers when he woke up, began to vibrate. He lifted the hem of his sweatshirt and slid it out. The bottom half of the screen was fogged from where it had been pressed against his thigh but even with the translucent covering, he saw his father’s name and photo clearly on the screen. Of course. Who else would fucking  _ call _ him? Felix looked at his father’s face, faraway and blurry in the small circle on the screen. He could imagine what it was about. Holidays were in a couple weeks. He wanted to try to get Felix to come home. He always refused at first, always snarled at him to leave him be, but Felix knew that inevitably he would agree to get it over with. He told himself it was to get his father off his back and not because he felt at all bad for him eating dinner alone in that big house. But he still wasn’t going to answer him now. Felix waited until the phone stopped vibrating and the “missed call” notification popped up instead. He knew that, within a minute, his phone would vibrate again to alert him of a voicemail, but he still put it to sleep and jammed it back into his waistband.

Felix glanced back up at the faded brick front of their apartment building and back down at the steps dotted with cigarette butts and blackened circles of discarded gum. He really should go back inside.

Like clockwork, his phone vibrated against his hip.

\--

Sylvain stretched his arms above his head and let them drop. He shook them out from his shoulders to his fingers and wiggled his torso first to the left and then to the right. His stomach had that familiar flutter it got whenever he was about to perform. He embraced the feeling of butterflies flapping their wings in his stomach even if he was about to drown them in JD. He snatched up the old Gatorade bottle he had filled with the whiskey (and a little bit of something charitably called “lemon drink” he had picked up at a bodega) and began guzzling it down. He was aware of eyes on him and cracked one of his open to see Bernadetta openly staring at him, her hands resting on the curve of her bass guitar. Her brow was knit a bit in concern, which he attributed either to the way that he was quickly draining the bottle or the outfit he had picked for the show, which was a pair of woefully ripped jeans and a crop top that read “ _ Cum Blow Me _ ” in all caps. He suspected that it was the former.

Bernadetta was a bit of an odd one. She was the only one in the band who didn’t come from a musical background. Sylvain had found her at a queer bookstore downtown, reading her poetry at an open mic event. Her voice had wavered and her hands shook, making the papers ruffle, but her words had been magic. Sylvain had stood there, absolutely gobsmacked and had recruited her on the spot. Or tried to. It took some convincing, but he had gotten her to join. She couldn’t play any instruments, though. She could sing, but only when she thought other people couldn’t hear her, which was a shame, because Sylvain thought she had a lovely voice. It sounded a bit like Joni Mitchell and it reminded Sylvain of night during his youth spent with his mother’s records, the sound turned down and his ear pressed against the stereo so he didn’t wake his parents up or, worse--his brother. With the instrument, though, he had helped. He gave her his old bass from his high school days, when they were BOAR and not Killing Edge, and Dimitri had been their guitarist instead of Dorothea. He taught her a few basslines, because it wasn’t like any of their songs were particularly difficult, and she got on well enough.

He finished his drink and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his eyes flicking from Bernadetta to the bass she clung to like a life raft. It was still his old one replete with faded, peeling stickers and the denim strap that was more faded and in addition to being frayed, but still holding strong. He could still see himself with the strap loosened almost as far as it could go so he could pump his bass low on his hips. But he couldn’t picture himself in the past for too long, because it would invite other memories to surface. The kind he tried to wash away with enough booze.

When Dorothea--or anyone--asked what made their previous band break up, Sylvain joked that the end of BOAR was similar to that of Fleetwood Mac, but. That wasn’t far from the truth. He knew he had a lot to do with that. They were too damn young to do any of what they were doing, then. They didn’t know what scars it would leave. Sylvain wasn’t the only one who had slept with the other three members. Felix shared that distinction, after all, but if anyone wanted to, he let them blame him. He always did. If sex was involved and then too many emotions and anger, Sylvain always took the fall. He didn’t think he deliberately sabotaged relationships with sex, but he certainly had no other answer for what to do with powerful emotions. Felix, he got angry. Sylvain just fucked. It was almost a joke in the scene. Couldn’t break in into the scene without riding Sylvain’s dick. He laughed along with it, because what else was he supposed to do with a reputation such as his? It was what it was. He didn’t know if he could change it.

It certainly was that way in the past. Except with Felix. When Sylvain slept with Ingrid and Dimitri, those were isolated incidents. Felix was always off and on. They danced around each other and sometimes...sometimes, they could almost be a proper couple. Always almost. Sylvain operated in “almosts” and “maybes.” Never anything definitive. Nowadays, they never even pretended to be a couple. Not in any conventional sense. When they reignited anything, sure, Sylvain only slept with Felix until it was inevitably called off again, but he didn’t kid himself in thinking that it was an actual relationship. He didn’t think the two of them were capable of it. He certainly wasn’t. On some level, Sylvain knew that he and Felix were two fucked up people and would just fuck each other up. Him especially. He shouldn’t be allowed to be with anyone.

“Sylvain?” Bernadetta’s voice wavered a bit on the second syllable of his name. “Are you okay?”

He blinked once and then once more, realizing he had been zoning, staring at the bit of liquor in the bottom of his bottle.

“I’m great,” he said and flashed what he figured was a mostly convincing smile. “Let’s go.”

He tossed the bottle aside and walked past Bernadetta towards the door that led onstage. As he did, he patted her on the shoulder and tried to ignore the look of concern plastered on her face.

\--

A lot of illicit substances had found their way down Sylvain’s throat, up his nose, or in his veins over the years, but he felt like nothing quite matched the high of being onstage. There was nothing like feeling the energy of the crowd pulsing around him while he sang and spoke and grinded on his mic stand. He sang the songs Bernadetta wrote, none of their old ones penned by Felix and Dimitri. Dorothea’s voice, clear as a bell and beautiful as a bird’s, backed his and created a sound that was uniquely theirs.

Tonight the small, low-ceilinged bar was packed and almost everyone was reaching for the stage. Reaching for him. At one point, a girl’s fingers caught the fraying hem of his jeans but Sylvain spun away, laughing. He drank from his refilled bottle and spoke between songs. He bounced up and down and threw himself onto the ground, rolling on the mic chord. He was never meant to be a bassist. This was where he belonged.

Whatever was between them offstage disappeared here. There was friction, but it created a spark. Sylvain could bend back and grin at Ingrid as she played drums. He could grab the mic stand and crouch down so he could mash his cheek against Felix’s as they shared. Felix’s voice was scratchy and rough, but Sylvain actually loved when he sang. Liked. It was good.

The high of applause continued after the show, and it took everything in him not to pound his chest with both fists and run around the bar with his pent up energy. Granted, this probably had something to do with the lines he had done in the bathroom when a fan snagged his arm when he was entering the bar from the back room, but mostly it was the music.

Ingrid saw him leave the bathroom rubbing his nose. He waved, and she gave him the finger. Sylvain expected an earful later, and dreaded it. Ingrid almost never got what she wanted to say right on the first try and, oftentimes, ended up hurting people worse the way she blundered with her words. But she tried, so Sylvain gave her credit for that. She turned away from him and resumed her conversation with the drummer from The Outsiders. Sylvain knew him in passing--hard to miss him since he was over six feet tall and built like a linebacker--but not personally. Well, that personally.

He felt like there were flash bulbs going off in his head. White crystal lights exploding behind his eyes when he closed them. He was lighter than air, zooming through his own veins like a water slide. It felt the way it did when he was manic, which was why he didn’t do coke too often. Part of his experiment tonight was to see if he still didn’t like it. He and Felix had done it in their late teens, occasionally, but Felix got sick one time so they mostly cut it out. Felix didn’t do too many drugs these days. He was drinking, though. Not the way Sylvain did, but he saw him leaning against the bar with a bottle of beer. Every time he found him again--a buoy of sorts in the chaos of the crowd and his own mind--the label seemed to change. Sylvain didn’t judge. He was a lot of things, but he wasn’t a hypocrite.

People stopped him as he walked, telling him how they liked the show or this or that. Sometimes they would touch him to get his attention and he’d nearly jump and then have to laugh it off.

He found Ingrid again, still talking to the drummer whose name he couldn’t quite remember.

“You were great,” he said, voice loud and booming as if Sylvain wasn’t a mere foot in front of him.

“Thanks.” He rubbed his ear a bit and grinned.

Ingrid was looking at him, a glare on her face. It wasn’t angry, he didn’t think. It was the kind of “Oh, Sylvain,” look she had worn for the majority of their shared history. He rubbed under his nose and Ingrid caught the gesture, the furrow in her brow deepening. Sylvain responded by giving her an even broader grin and a thumbs up before leaving the two of them to it. It didn’t matter about Ingrid’s concern or disappointment or how she could never get things right on the first try. Sylvain knew that he was a fuck up. He called himself on it regularly and Ingrid certainly said it enough in case he forgot.

It was two weeks until Christmas, which meant that he had about six months before he turned twenty-eight. As he made his way towards the bar, Sylvain wondered if that was enough time to get famous enough before he kicked it and made it into the 27 Club by the skin of his teeth.

With those morbid thoughts to keep him company, he flagged down the bartender for another drink.

\--

Felix leaned against the bar, tipping his third bottle of beer to his lips. He wasn’t drunk, really. Gross, IPA piss water shit barely had any alcohol in it, he found, but it passed the time. He didn’t want to move from his spot at the bar, mostly because his elbow was in a puddle of condensation and he didn’t want to deal with cleaning it up just yet. He accepted compliments on his show as people came up, but most people avoided him. He knew what blogs and other social media said about him, about how “moody” he was. Felix hated it, but at least his reputation got people to leave him alone. He could deal with being the surliest boy in the local indie scene if he wasn’t badgered to death by annoying hangers-on.

He watched Sylvain make an absolute fool of himself with a measure of distaste. His jeans were so torn that they were almost obscene. His knees stuck out nakedly and the jeans were even worn thin at the crotch. And that obnoxious shirt. Fuck. Why was this the man he loved?

Felix stared into the top of his beer and scowled. There was no way he was drunk enough to think of Sylvain like that. The last time he thought he loved Sylvain, he had been too young to know what love was. Maybe they  _ could _ have loved each other, but that moment had to have passed. It was just too many shitty IPAs and looking at Sylvain in that dumb crop top doing his head in. Sylvain was a comfort he could come back to. Someone he could trust in bed not to treat him like porcelain or a fetish.

Against his better judgment, he took another pull from his bottle of beer. Felix was aware, then, of someone standing near him. They were just in his peripherals and he assumed that it was another person to compliment his playing or the show or whatever it was. It wasn’t Sylvain, who was still in front of him, drinking from the lip of a plastic cup full of liquor even though it had a little plastic coffee stirrer of a straw. Not that he wanted it to be. His breath probably stank of gin or whiskey or some awful combination of the two.

He turned to the person and his hand tightened around the bottle as he registered who it was in the dim light of the bar. Dimitri looked down at him, chewing his lower lip. His hair was pulled away from his face, which meant that Felix could see all of it without a curtain of ugly, straw-blonde hair covering it. Great. Why was Dimitri at their show? Why was he back in their lives at all?

Glenn had died protecting him, in that convenience store. The man robbing it had grabbed Dimitri and gestured with his gun. Glenn, always the hero, intervened and got a bullet in the throat for his trouble. That was the start of the divide between him and Dimitri, he always thought. The way it came to a head in the thankfully soundproofed Fraldarius basement. The two of them on the floor, tearing at each other’s clothes, mouths on top of mouths.

Then Dimitri was gone. And now he was back, playing at being a lead singer for Postscript. He was a lousy frontman. Nothing like Sylvain or Claude von Riegan, the lead singer from The Outsiders.

It was dumb, Felix knew, to blame Dimitri for Glenn’s death. It wasn’t his fault that his father had rushed to see him instead of Felix after finding out about Glenn. It wasn’t his fault he was closer and so easier to grab. It wasn’t his fault Glenn tried to be all noble. But he still resented him a little. That and everything else. How it kept piling up and, over time, their guitar work stopped being harmonious and their ability to write songs together dried up.

“You sounded good up there.”

For some reason, that simple statement made Felix see red. That was what he had to say? Coming back in, worming his way into a scene Felix was a part of because Dimitri  _ always _ had to do what he did and then get more attention for it. He slammed his bottle down on the bar top.

“Fuck off!” he snarled.

He looked stunned at the outburst and that only made him angrier. Dimitri had the audacity to wonder why Felix would be at all upset with him. Suddenly, he couldn’t stand being in this bar for another second with him. Without saying goodbye, he stormed past him and kept stomping until he made it out of the bar.

The December air bit at him, catching the wet part of his jacket from where it had rested in the puddle on the bar. He took his phone out, cursing all the while. He hated taxis and rideshares, but he had to get home somehow. He couldn’t be here any longer.

\--

The ride home managed to cool off Felix’s temper somewhat. Away from the bar and away from Dimitri, he managed to calm down and even halfway listen to NPR on his driver’s radio. He wasn’t fully calmed down, but it was better. He couldn’t get his mind off of Sylvain, though. As his anger and annoyance at Dimitri’s unceremonious appearance faded with every block put between him and the bar, he couldn’t get his mind off of the sight of him. The exposed skin, the way his throat worked when he swallowed. How he was a supernova onstage. His cheek against his, the roughness of his stubble on his skin, slick with sweat. His lips close, so close.

Felix intended to get home, crawl into bed, and stroke himself to sleep. Whether he would entertain starting things up with Sylvain would remain to be seen. He was tipsy and high off performing and needed to get his head on right.

He unlocked the door and stepped inside. Sylvain stood in the center of their living room, checking his phone. It was like his thoughts from the car converged and made Sylvain materialize in front of him. Fuck. He looked up at his approach and their eyes met--no, their eyes crashed together. Felix looked away first.

“What are you doing here?” he asked irritably.

What he meant was that he was confused how Sylvain beat him home. When Felix left, he was still partying. Sylvain arched a brow.

“I live here.”

“I know that, asshole. I mean. How did you get here...before me?”

“Oh. Ingrid dropped me off.”

Felix frowned.

“Dropped you off?”

Sylvain put his phone back in his pocket and nodded.

“Yeah, she and that big lunk from The Outsiders were going to go get something to eat.” He finished the statement by waggling his eyebrows.

Felix ignored it. The explanation made enough sense. He had had to wait for a ride for a bit in the cold, after all. He accepted Sylvain’s answer with a nod of his head and began unloading his belongings on their kitchen table. Phone, wallet, keys. Felix stared at the cat keychain that bore his namesake’s grinning disembodied head and shook his head.

“Hey…”

Sylvain’s voice was a tired drawl, the way of speaking that came about when he was coming around from being very fucked up to being only moderately fucked up.

“What?” He turned to look at him.

Sylvain looked almost wounded, standing like a prat in the middle of the living room as he was. Felix folded his arms over his chest.

“What?” he asked again.

“Did you mean it?”

He had to be deliberately being cryptic. Felix was too tired for it. He could feel the beer in his knees and with the post-show adrenaline gone, he felt exhausted.

“Mean what?”

“What you said the other day. About wanting to come to my room.”

Their eyes met again. Felix hated making eye contact. He always found it difficult. He looked back at the keychain because it was easier. The chipped paint on Felix the Cat’s face and his wide-eyed, vacant stare. What could he say? He thought back to his sickening desire the other night. To his weird flux of feelings seeing him at the bar. He looked back, focusing his gaze on Sylvain’s chin. What did he have to lose, really?

“I rarely say shit I don’t mean,” he said simply.

There was a moment where neither of them spoke until Felix decided to take the initiative. He closed the distance between them and brought Sylvain down to him so he could kiss him. It was wet and hot and, like he thought earlier, his breath tasted awful. It was the first time he and Sylvain had kissed in months.

Sylvain’s arms went around his waist and pulled him tight against his body. Felix let his hands rest on his shoulders and tilted his face to get a better angle on kissing him. Sylvain’s hands sank lower to rest against his ass. He would have cupped it if there were anything to cup--if anyone hassled Felix about it, he often growled that this was what hormones tended to  _ do _ and to lay the fuck off.

“I always forget how much I miss this until we’re in it again,” Sylvain said, breaking the kiss.

Felix knew he wasn’t good with words so he just said, “Stop talking. Let that mouth be useful for once.”

Sylvain chuckled against his mouth. “Such a romantic.”

He allowed himself to be hoisted into Sylvain’s arms and carried to one of their bedrooms. It didn’t matter which. They went to Felix’s left, though, so he presumed that it was Sylvain’s. They kissed all the while, Felix with his legs wrapped around Sylvain’s waist and Sylvain’s arms carefully holding him.

Felix felt a mattress beneath his back, but that wasn’t surprising. Kissing with them was never really about kissing. There was always a destination in mind. The only time they had ever kissed just to kiss was Felix’s first, at his birthday party. Outside in the cold, February air, his cheeks hot and red and Sylvain’s hair mussed by his knit hat. How young and dumb they’d been. Somehow younger and dumber than they’d been when they were in BOAR, when everything got fucked up.

But none of that mattered now. What mattered now was Sylvain’s cowlicky curls between his fingers. His tongue probing the ridges on the roof of Felix’s mouth. One of Sylvain’s hands supported him by the back of his head but the other was sinking lower, between Felix’s legs. He heard him open the fly of his jeans with an undoubtedly well-practiced flick of his fingers.

“Felix, Felix, Felix,” he moaned into his mouth.

This was also to be expected. Sylvain chanted his name like a prayer into his mouth, whispering it between kisses. He was a master of sweet nothings and sometimes Felix thought he actually meant them. Felix never knew what to say during sex, good or bad, so mostly he just kept his mouth shut save for groans and sighs. His partners tended to prefer that, anyway. Even Sylvain.

“You always get me,” Sylvain murmured, “Felix, it’s always you.”

Alright, this was a bit much. Felix broke the kiss and managed to get himself up onto his elbows. He leaned his weight to one side and reached out with one hand to shove Sylvain’s hand into his open fly.

“Don’t go and get romantic, Gautier. Just fuck me.”

That didn’t seem to dissuade Sylvain who responded with a breathy laugh against Felix’s neck.

“Love it when you talk dirty, Fee.”

“Shut up before I change my mind.”

Sylvain pulled back a bit and he could see him widen his eyes in the dark of his room.

“Would you say that after I do this?”

His fingers found their way through his boxer briefs to tease him. Felix felt desire pool low in his belly and he bit his lip. Sylvain leaned close to him.

“You talk a big game, but you’re wetter than Niagra Falls down here.”

He very nearly shoved him for that comment, but that would mean that Sylvain’s fingers would stop teasing him, and he didn’t want that. Instead he arched his back, angling his hips into his hand.

“Shut up,” he muttered, and pulled him back up for another kiss.

\--

Morning found Sylvain not as hungover as he thought he would be. He wasn’t sure what that said about him, but he kind of liked waking up with only a  _ minor _ headache instead of feeling like someone was jackhammering his brain. He moved to roll over, but came with resistance. Scrubbing a hand over his face, Sylvain opened his eyes to see that Felix was still in his bed. This was unusual. When they normally resumed whatever quasi-relationship they had, Felix always left the first time. He would spend the night in his own bed. On roughly the fifth night, he would start spending the night with him. It had happened so much over the years that Sylvain thought that they had it down to a science. He wondered what the potential fallout would be--if their reunion would end as quickly as it came together once more--but at least the physical presence of Felix in his bed meant that he hadn’t dreamed their night together.

Somewhere on the far end of his room, his phone vibrated with an incoming text message. His belongings had been quickly discarded along with their clothes last night. Sylvain knew Felix’s body, had known it for years, but there was always something  _ so good _ about the first time they got back together. And, as far as their reunions went, this one was pretty romantic. Usually Felix just clomped into his bed and started jerking him off. This one, at least, started with a kiss.

Sylvain carefully climbed over his slumbering partner and made it across to the other side of the room. He woke his phone up and it nearly tumbled out of his fingers when he saw the message preview. Sylvain chewed his lower lip as he opened it to read it in its entirety.

**(Miklan):** _Hey, dipshit, I’m coming by. I need $30_

Sylvain felt his stomach drop.

On one hand, he was somewhat relieved that Miklan would at least warn him and give him time to mentally prepare for his arrival. It was very easy to think that his brother would just drop by without warning just to fuck with him. It wouldn’t be out of character for Miklan, after all, to be that much of a dick. He already took whatever cash--always cash--quickly, just to watch him flinch. Then he’d laugh and leave with some insult, just like always. Sylvain could have told him to fuck off, but part of him felt guilty. Before his own uselessness was apparent, he was doted on by their parents. Apparently, after his mom had Miklan, the doctors said his father couldn’t have any other children, but eventually, Sylvain came around. He was a medical marvel--a miracle, his parents called him. And Miklan hated him for it. He never let him forget his resentment, either. Sylvain had a vivid memory where he had been practicing hockey on the frozen over pond behind their house when Miklan had come up to him and, without warning, just beat the shit out of him. He had to lie and say his bruises were because of falling on the ice. There were other incidents, but that one always stuck out to him because of the viciousness of it. Usually, Miklan was sneaky: tripping him on the stairs, punching him in the arm, or “forgetting” to pick him up from practice and leaving him stranded outside in the cold. But that time...he remembered being on the ice, worried it would break under him from the force of Miklan’s fists, the cold of it biting through his gloves, while his brother called him every name he could think of.

Sylvain ran his fingers through his hair. Maybe he  _ should _ tell him to fuck off. It wasn’t his fault he was born and, anyway, he was a piece of shit, too. He was no longer the golden boy. Now his parents just sighed when they saw him and wondered where they went wrong. Out loud. When Sylvain was standing right there.

Their apartment building didn’t have a buzzer or a magnetic lock out front. It simply could be opened by anyone, which was why every apartment itself had a heavy deadbolt. Sylvain normally didn’t care, but the buzzer could have given him more time to mentally prepare, he reckoned, before someone knocked twice on the door. Hard. Sylvain grabbed his wallet from where he discarded it on the floor and pulled three tens from it. Miklan always asked for money in cash, never anything through any sort of cash app. Sylvain didn’t know what he did with the money, but honestly he didn’t care once his brother was out of his sight.

He walked out of the room and crossed to the front door. Miklan could ask for money from whatever girlfriend he was living with currently, or whatever friend he was mooching off of, but he always turned to Sylvain. Because why? He was afraid to say no? Because he  _ felt bad, _ somehow, that his parents favored him when they were kids? He didn’t know, but the less he actually said to Miklan, the better.

Sylvain opened the door and, there was his brother. To him, Miklan looked like a warped, funhouse mirror version of him. They were both tall, they both had red hair, they were both built in generally the same way, but Miklan had sharper edges, rougher lines. A nasty scar snaked down his face, the skin angry and puckered.

“Hey, shithead.”

A mirthless grin creased his features, the edges of it not reaching his brother’s eyes. Sylvain refused to take the bait. Instead, he simply held the money out.

“Here.”

As usual, he snatched it from his hand too quickly. Despite seeing it coming, Sylvain still flinched. A harsh bark of a laugh escaped his throat.

“You never change do you, Sylvie?”

Miklan clapped him on the shoulder. Sylvain reeled backwards. Another laugh, this one longer.

“Bye,” he said.

“You aren’t gonna let me in?”

He knew better than to answer him. Sylvain swallowed and clenched his jaw.

“Bye,” he repeated.

Miklan gave a laconic salute and ambled away. It was all he could do not to slam the door behind him. He knew this practiced nonchalance was an act and if he did anything to spark his brother’s temper, he didn’t know what would happen. Sylvain slid the deadbolt back into place and pressed his forehead against the cool metal of the door.

“Fuck,” he muttered under his breath.

Behind him, he heard the slight squeak of door hinges being opened. He lifted his head and turned to see Felix standing in the doorway. His hair was still down, hanging in clumps over his forehead nearly to his eyes, and tangled at the base of his neck. He was scraping sleep crust from one eye and had his leg bent behind the other to scratch the back of his calf with his foot. After the shitty fifteen minutes Sylvain had just had, Felix never looked better to him.

“Wanna get breakfast?”

Felix dropped his hand and, immediately, he folded his arms over his chest. He squinted at him, as if trying to guess Sylvain’s angle--and if he did, Sylvain hoped that he would tell him what it was--and then nodded.

“Sure.”

\--

The diner wasn’t one of the twenty-four hour affairs that Felix favored. It advertised itself as a brunch place and closed at one in the afternoon. He noted, with some distaste, that the tables weren’t even sticky.

“Don’t make that face,” Sylvain said. “Mercedes knows the girl who owns it. They used to run in the same circles and do workshops together.”

Felix had no issues with Mercedes, despite the band she was in. Which wasn’t fair, really, to the rest of the members of Postscript that they had shitty taste in lead singers. He even used to have a sort of thing with their drummer, Annette Dominic--in a rare instance where she dated someone remotely close to her own age. If one called occasionally spending the night at each other’s places as “dating,” which neither of them did. Mercedes, though, was loved by everyone. She ran workshops for LGBT youth and was always willing to listen to anyone’s problems. Felix knew he would never take her up on  _ that, _ but he appreciated her and what she did.

“Fine,” he said.

Sylvain sat across from him in the booth, which wasn’t torn or cracked vinyl like Felix preferred, but he decided to deal for now.

“I’m paying,” Sylvain said, “Even though I’m thirty bucks short now.”

He gave a wink that Felix immediately saw through. He hadn’t heard much that morning, but he had heard the awful jackal laugh of Sylvain’s brother and knew that he had to have come around begging for cash. The rat bastard. He didn’t know why Sylvain didn’t just tell Miklan to fuck off. Felix had, when he was younger, and had just been laughed at by him. Miklan was nearly ten years older than Felix was and always saw him as a child. Even in the thankfully rare instances that he saw him now, as a twenty-five-year-old fucking adult. To him, he was always “little Fee Fee” or whatever diminutive of his name that he chose to use. His identity--and Dimitri’s--were a joke to him and he used their names to taunt them. It wasn’t like Sylvain and Ingrid using their names. Or Glenn or his father. It felt mocking.

“You’ll regret that,” he said instead of voicing it. “I’m starving.”

Felix wasn’t sure why he bit it back. He never hesitated to speak his mind, but. He didn’t understand Miklan and Sylvain’s relationship and he never would. He just knew that he hated Miklan. If one of their older brothers had to die, why couldn’t it have been him?

_ Right. Like that fuckwad would ever sacrifice himself for anyone else… _

A server came to fill mugs with coffee and asked if they needed more time with the menu. Felix glanced at it and spotted something that appealed to him.

“Huevos habaneros,” he said, passing over his menu.

“The fried green tomato eggs benedict,” Sylvain and dimpled a smile at the server.

She gave them a nod and left. Felix reached for his coffee and blew on the steam.

“You barely even looked at the menu.”

“I told you, I’ve been here before.”

Felix pulled a face.

“No, you said Mercedes knew the girl who owns it.”

“Well, I came here with Mercedes.”

“When?”

Sylvain hesitated and Felix fought the urge to roll his eyes. Of course. He never bothered being jealous anymore, it was too much effort. It was nearly a running joke in the local scene that everyone slept with Sylvain.

“You don’t have to hide that you came here after you fucked,” he said. “I don’t care.”

Felix watched Sylvain tear open two sugar packets to dump into his mug. Watched him lift his spoon and carefully stir it.

“You don’t?”

“No. We weren’t together at the time, I assume, so why should I care?”

“Maybe I want you to care a little.”

He punctuated it with another wink and Felix couldn’t tell if he was serious or not.

“Oh, shut up.”

Sylvain laughed, so he categorized it as a joke, and got on with it. They weren’t talking about their reunion last night, but that was usual. They didn’t have to define anything or set off any fireworks. They were together and would be together until one of them did something to split them up or they got sick of each other. Felix decided to just enjoy it in the moment for what it was. He  _ liked _ when he and Sylvain were together, he just couldn’t see a way for it to be permanent, and that was fine. This breakfast together, even, felt like a date but it wasn’t. Sylvain would never say that it was and Felix knew that he wouldn’t be the first to do so either.

His phone vibrated with an incoming call and Felix scowled before he even looked at the screen. The phone did a jittery little jig on the table, his father’s face flashing on the screen. Felix reached and dismissed the call, but not before Sylvain saw who was calling.

“Why’d you hang up?”

He fixed him with a look. Sylvain always liked his dad, probably because his own was a bit of a bastard. He tried to get Felix’s issues with Rodrigue, but he never quite could. Felix preferred when he didn’t bother, just as he had earlier with his own opinions on Miklan.

“I don’t want to be guilted into going home for the holidays.”

“Ah.” Sylvain took a sip of his coffee and wrinkled his nose at the heat of it. “What if we go together?”

Felix blinked at him.

“What?”

He couldn’t have heard him correctly.

“Yeah, we’ll go for the holidays. It’ll be great. I’d wanna see Rodrigue again.”

He shook his head. “Absolutely fucking not.”

Sylvain cocked his head to the side.

“C’mon. Think about it. You’ll have me as a buffer and I’ll even drive so we can have a quick getaway. And it gets your dad off your back.”

Maybe it was the fact that they had slept together last night and some of the afterglow was still clinging to the edges of Felix’s mind, or that Sylvain was so damn charming that what he said actually made a bit of sense.

“Maybe,” he allowed. “Let me think about it.”

But there was Sylvain, wearing a shit-eating grin as if he had already won. And maybe he had, but Felix wasn’t going to tell him that.

“Wipe that puss off, Fee.”

Sylvain flicked his spoon towards him. There was a tiny bit of coffee on it and it splashed on Felix’s face. He stared at him, too surprised to even be mad. Sylvain started laughing and, despite himself, Felix joined in.

\--

Felix always felt strange coming back home. He had spent so long in the city. The three of them had moved out the second he and Ingrid graduated high school. It wasn’t that he felt like he had outgrown the town and neighborhood where he grew up. It felt more like he simply didn’t belong here. He never did. The Felix who followed his brother around everywhere like a puppy and who had to do everything with Dimitri, he had lived here. The Felix who cheekily told adults how he was going to marry Sylvain, long before he even knew what marriage actually was. He hadn’t been that Felix for a long time.

The sun was slanting behind the houses, giving everything a golden wash. The houses looked almost like silhouettes until they drove past them. Felix was glad that traffic had been so bad for the holidays. Over the past week or so, he had managed to whittle his father down to them only staying for the weekend. With their late start, it left only tonight and all day tomorrow. Part of him felt guilty, that his father had to beg to spend time with him, but. Felix had little to say to him. His father said it all when Glenn died, as far as he was concerned. When he ran to Dimitri instead of him. When he said that they could take solace in the fact that he died a hero, as if that would ever make Felix feel better or make up for the fact that he was gone.

Sylvain pulled into the driveway and, for a moment, he resented that he let him talk him into this. He could have been back home, stomping down the sidewalk and shoving tourists and shoppers out of the way. Instead he sat in Sylvain’s old Neon, looking through the fogged-up windshield at the house where he grew up.

It looked very much the same as it always did. The same blue clapboard siding and gray roof. The black door and matching shutters. The wide, covered porch. The decorative stone frogs out front. There was a spare key hidden under one of them, but his father always changed it up to throw people off. Once, Dimitri’s father had gotten drunk at a summer party and got himself locked out. He had yelled “WHICH FROG?!” for ten minutes until Glenn let him back him.

“You good?” Sylvain asked.

He shrugged. They were here. That was that. Felix knew that his father wasn’t a bad person or, really, that bad of a father. He just didn’t  _ get _ him. He never did. When he was a teenager, Felix very nearly made a hobby out of keeping things from him. As far as his father was concerned, he was a good little virgin who never drank or smoked or stole. He definitely never knew about the trip he and Sylvain took to the clinic, but no one did except for the two of them, Ingrid, and Dimitri.

The front door opened and his father walked out, apparently summoned by the sound of Sylvain’s engine. No surprise, Felix thought. This car was from 2005 and wasn’t suitable for cold weather. Sylvain killed the engine and got out first. His father smiled in greeting. From what Felix could tell, he never really wanted the two of them to be together, but he always liked Sylvain.

“Sylvain, wow. Did you get taller?”

“Don’t think that happens when you’re twenty-seven.” Sylvain gave one of his winning grins and accepted the hug given to him.

Felix put his hand on his seatbelt and pressed down slowly to release it. Even more slowly, he guided it off of his shoulder and let it retract. He eased the door open and stepped out.

“Felix.”

His father smiled at him. Between him and Sylvain’s bright grins, Felix felt like he was on some kid’s show or an old Mentos commercial. He had done good. He had shown up. Yay, him.

“Hi.”

He shut the door and stared at his father over the top of Sylvain’s car.

“Do you need help with your bags?” his father asked.

Felix shook his head.

“We didn’t pack much.”

They weren’t staying longer than the weekend. Felix let that fact hang between the two of them. His father looked back, an expression Felix couldn’t name on his face. Sylvain shifted his eyes from one of them to the other and then clapped his hands once.

“Hey!” he said brightly. “So that drive took  _ way _ longer than we thought and I’m starving. Who wants to order dinner?”

His chipper demeanor sent a twinge through Felix’s jaw. He tried to tamp it down. Sylvain was just keeping the peace. His father, at least, seemed to perk up at the thought.

“That’s a great idea.”

Felix drew a deep breath in through his nose and bit back what he wanted to say. He could only bite his tongue for so long, but he figured that he could make it through dinner.

Probably.

\--

Felix’s bed wasn’t big enough for the two of them. It wasn’t when they were teenagers and it certainly wasn’t now. Sylvain’s options were limited, though. There were three bedrooms in the house. There was no designated guest room and Rodrigue would never have him sleep on the couch. The only free room really wasn’t free at all. It was Glenn’s and the door always remained shut. From what Sylvain could tell, everything inside the room was left as it was when he lived in it. Occasionally, Rodrigue went in and dusted and vacuumed, but that was the extent of it.

This bed was the only option. It was a full-sized bed, at the very least, as opposed to a twin. Sylvain could take solace in that even if the bed was pushed into a corner of the room so, every time he tried to move, he ended up bumping his elbow on the wall. Felix’s room also hadn’t changed from when he was growing up so Sylvain was directly below his old wall scrolls and he could feel Vegeta’s judgmental gaze on him even in the gloom.

Dinner went alright, he thought. Things between Felix and Rodrigue were tense, but no more than usual. Felix’s snippy comments, Rodrigue’s clueless but well-meaning questions. Sylvain felt like the person in a tennis match that ran back and forth across the length of the court to watch the ball, but it was alright. Rodrigue ordered from Felix’s favorite Mexican place, probably in a show of good faith, so at least the food was good.

“It’s not so bad,” Sylvain ventured.

He kept his voice low. Rodrigue’s room was all the way down the hall, but he didn’t want to take any chances. He was used to keeping quiet in Felix’s room at night. When he would climb up the garden lattice like Spider-Man and knock lightly on his window. Felix turned around so he was facing him. Sylvain scooted back on the mattress and nearly smacked his back on the wall.

“I guess,” he muttered. “I’ll be happy when we leave.”

“When are you ever not happy to leave anywhere?”

“Hmph. You know what I mean.”

He did. Sylvain reached out to stroke Felix’s hair. It was down so he could smooth his hand over the back of his head, let his fingers toy with the long strands that hung to his shoulders. Felix leaned into him at the touch, letting out a little purr from deep in his throat. His hand slipped down to Sylvain’s sweatpants and lingered on his waistband.

“What are you doing?”

“What do you think I’m doing?”

It was hard to tell in the dark, but he knew that Felix was making his grumpy face. He was scowling a bit, lips pushed forward in what could almost be called a pout if Felix actually pouted, and Sylvain would usually kiss it away.

“We’re in your childhood bed and your dad is down the hall.”

“Tch. Like we’ve never done anything in this bed with my dad down the hall.”

Felix had a point. They had had sex in this bed many times. Felix had lost his virginity to him in this bed, even, when things had seemed like they still made sense and everything would be okay. Basically, Sylvain thought, when they were even dumber than they were now.

“Alright. You got me there.”

Felix slid his hand under his waistband. He squirmed back a bit to get more space and smacked his spine on the wall.

“Ow,” Sylvain hissed. He reached back to rub the spot on his back and ended up whacking his elbow again. “Shit!”

“Shh!”

Felix put both hands over his mouth.

“I think the bed’s too small, Fee,” he said, moving them down so he could speak. “And, besides, Vegeta’s watching us from, like, four different spots in your room. Five counting the figure on your shelf.”

“So?”

“I’m just  _ aware _ of it right now.”

He could nearly feel Felix smirking from his spot pressed against him.

“Well,  _ I _ wasn’t aware you were such a prude.”

“Oh, yeah. You know it.”

Sylvain still had Felix’s hands in his. He lifted their joined hands to his lips to kiss along his knuckles. He  _ could _ be romantic when he wanted to. Even in a cramped bed that held them and so many more memories. Even with Rodrigue down the hall. Even with Felix’s favorite anime character being an unintended voyeur.

“So what? We just go to sleep?”

Sylvain considered, massaging Felix’s hands with the sides of his thumbs as he did.

“I mean. There’s no room to mess around. We can still make out.”

“Make out? What are we? Fourteen?” He could  _ hear _ the eye roll in Felix’s words.

He let go of his hands and reached around to pull Felix close to him.

“Is that a no?”

Felix tilted his face up towards him and leaned forward enough to bite Sylvain’s lower lip, catching it between his teeth.

“Not at all.”

\--

Dinner the next night wasn’t any better. Felix had made it a full day with his father, managing to do nothing but watch noir movies with him on TCM. It was something they had always shared, growing up, before everything. It was almost normal, he thought, or as normal as things with his father could get. Sylvain wasn’t a huge fan, but he sat through them with them and made comments on who he thought committed the various murders.

By dinner, though, Felix was at his limit. There was no Bogie or Barbara Stanwyck to be a buffer between them anymore. To make matters worse, Sylvain was drinking. If he was drinking, how the  _ hell _ were they supposed to make their escape? Felix hated driving Sylvain’s car. It was fifteen years old and rattled, especially in cold weather. Like the middle of fucking December. But now he probably had to. Great.

Felix pressed the tines of the fork against his palm, hoping the pain would give his mind some clarity. He didn’t want to watch Sylvain drinking. He  _ wanted _ to drink, but now he couldn’t. He had to drive all the way back to the city.

“It’s nice to see you two together,” his father said.

He fought back a sneer. His father never liked when he and Sylvain were together. He worried about Felix and griped about how Sylvain was “bad” for him. Even their clueless parents knew about Sylvain’s reputation--which wasn’t nearly as bad back then as it was now--even if they didn’t know about the specifics within their own group of four.

“For now,” Sylvain said, laughing.

He was already slurring his words, which made sense because he had started drinking earlier in the day, but Felix had incorrectly assumed that he would stop so he could be sober enough to drive them back. His tolerance was high and he could and  _ has _ driven home fucked up (once he had mixed red bull, vodka, and kool-aid and drove home, perfectly in whatever lane he was in without speeding at all), but Felix didn’t like testing it.

His father frowned, his brow creasing in concern. Felix wanted to spit. Not just for Sylvain’s bonehead comment, but for his father doing this big show of concern. He cared, he knew he did, but he would never forget the night Glenn died. When his father went to Dimitri to check on him before he even bothered with Felix.

“Oh, we’re always breaking up and getting back together,” Sylvain continued. He drained his wine glass and reached for the bottle again. “Y’know. Like always.”

“That isn’t healthy.”

A simple statement from his father, but one that made Felix cringe. He wanted to say something, but he bit his tongue. Nearly bit it off.

“Yeah, but what is?” Sylvain asked. He gestured with his nearly empty wine glass, the liquid gathered at the bottom of the container swirling a bit as he did.

This was the second bottle that had been opened at dinner alone. Felix didn’t want to think about how much Sylvain had had to drink throughout the day. He just knew that he had seen Sylvain in various states of being drunk or otherwise wasted over the years and knew when he was getting bad. This was far from the worst he had ever been, but he was still getting too loose-lipped.

“We’ve been like that for years.” He filled the glass a bit too high and didn’t wait for the wine to rest before drinking.

_ Why are you even bothering with a glass, Sylvain? Just drink from the fucking bottle… _

“Years?”

“Yeah. I mean, for a little bit I wanted to make it work, but it’s too fucked up,” Sylvain babbled on.

Felix pressed the tines more forcefully against his palm, bit harder on his tongue. The pain kept his mind clear. He was going to lose it. He had done so well to keep the peace and be cordial with his father the whole time. None of Felix’s famous tantrums. What did the alternative mags and blogs call him? The Surliest Boy in the Local Scene. Right. He should be proud of himself. But Sylvain was  _ testing _ him, even if he didn’t mean to.

“Like, I mean...shit happens, right?” He tipped the wine glass to his mouth, but it was too full and he had had too much and some sloshed out to land on the henley he wore beneath a flannel. The dark red liquid spread like a wound on the white fabric. “Hey, Fee, how old would they be? Like, ten now, right?”

Felix dropped the fork. It fell to the table with a clatter. He was no longer biting his tongue, because his mouth hung open slightly. He never believed people’s jaws actually dropped until just now. Sylvain  _ didn’t. _

His father, meanwhile, looked confused.

“What? Who are you talking about?”

“Nothing,” Felix hissed. “No one.”

He shot as venomous a look as he could muster at Sylvain. Felix knew the power of his glare, but he could only hope it could puncture the drunken haze Sylvain was in.

“Oh yeah,” he said, far too belatedly. “Nothin’. Felix and I found this kitten once. Hit by a car. Real sad.”

It was a terrible lie, but it didn’t matter. His father seemed to buy it or else  _ wanted _ to buy it. Felix, though, was mad. He kept everything with his father on a “need to know” basis. Ninety percent of the happenings in his life, he didn’t need to know.

“I guess I don’t really know you, Felix,” his father murmured.

His father was a lot of things, but he wasn’t dumb. He had to have figured it out, but he wasn’t going to bring it up. Felix wanted to explode. He felt his anger again, the heat of it, and this time he didn’t bother to try and tamp it down.

“Sylvain, what the fuck?!” he snarled.

He slammed both hands on the table and stood up.

“Felix…”

His father let his words trail off and he shook his head. Of course he didn’t know what to say. Felix never told him, because why would he? It was none of his business. It was no one’s business but his and maybe Sylvain’s. And there was Sylvain, wasted as always, blurting it out. He wanted to scream.

“I’m leaving,” he snapped. “I don’t fucking care anymore.”

Felix shoved himself away from the table and stormed out the front door, stopping only to put his boots on. He didn’t bother with his coat and so only wore his typical track jacket he kept on most of the time. The December air bit against him, the wind slashing at his face, but he didn’t care. He had his anger to keep him warm. He didn’t know where he was going or what he was doing. He didn’t have his bag or Sylvain’s keys. But he had to get out. He couldn’t be in there, getting embarrassed by Sylvain and questioned by his father.

“Felix!”

His exit seemed to have sobered Sylvain up somewhat, because his voice sounded clearer when he called out to him. He didn’t want to listen to him. He was mad. So much for being together again. It was always like this and he didn’t know why he was at all surprised. One of them found a way to cock it up. Sometimes it was Felix’s temper, but usually it was Sylvain. Sylvain being wasted and pulling shit like this. Felix almost wanted to cry, but he didn’t think that he could anymore.

“Felix!”

Sylvain’s legs were much longer than his and, even still drunk, he could catch up to him easily. Knowing he couldn’t outpace him, Felix whirled around to face him.

“What?” he demanded.

Sylvain hadn’t bothered with a coat either, but he had a few more layers on than Felix did, who only wore his track jacket over a t-shirt and his binder. Sylvain also had no business looking as good as he did when Felix was this pissed at him. Even under the cold buzz of the streetlight, he looked as handsome as the lead in a romantic movie. Maybe watching film noir and other old movies during his most formative years fucked with him that he found someone who just personified James Dean or Marlon Brando. No. To follow his actual life, seeing him as some sort of rock star. Listening to classic rock music in Dimitri’s room, looking at the black and white poster of Jim Morrison on his wall. Sylvain was the poster boy for rock’n’roll excess and Felix just rolled with it. Most of the time. But he couldn’t. Not now. Not when he behaved like this. And it wasn’t just now, was it?

“I’m sorry.”

Sylvain turned his hands out, a contrite look on his face. Felix wanted to wipe it off.

“Oh, you’re sorry?”

He nodded and raked a hand through his hair.

“I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, shit.”

Sylvain looked properly ashamed, but Felix wanted to keep riding on his wave of anger. Anger, his old friend.

“Yeah, I’m pretty loaded--”

“You’re always loaded!”

There it was, hot and metallic, burning the back of his throat, where his tongue connected to it, and behind his eyes. He felt like he would leak liquid steel with how the anger coursed through him.

“I’m sick of it, Sylvain! Every time I get dumb enough to think we can actually be something--” Felix cut himself off and shook his head. “Forget it.”

“Fee…”

He shook his head again, this time more vigorously.

“No. Just give me your fucking keys. We’re getting our shit and we’re getting out of here.”

Sylvain stared at him, not speaking. The buzz of the streetlight was the only sound along with Felix’s breathing. He didn’t realize he was breathing so heavily, blowing short bursts of air through his nose.

“My keys are in the house,” Sylvain said finally. “Let’s go. I’ll give them to you.”

They weren’t far from the house, but it felt like forever. Felix wasn’t looking at Sylvain, but the cold was getting through his cocoon of anger and clawing at his face. He walked back into his house and went to where his packed bag was waiting for him. Felix had gotten a jump on it before dinner so he and Sylvain could leave as quickly as possible. He had gotten Sylvain to do the same, an hour ago when he wasn’t blisteringly mad at him.

“Felix…”

He jerked up, in the midst of hoisting his backpack over his shoulder, to look at his father.

“What?”

“I...feel like I don’t know you,” he said.

_ Yeah, well, there’s a reason for that. _

“Yeah,” he said instead. “You don’t.”

Realizing he still had to put his coat on, Felix dropped his bag and went to where it was hung up near the door. He felt his father watching him as he tugged his knit hat on, carefully pulling it over his ponytail. Watched him watch him as he pulled his fake shearling coat on over top of his track jacket.

“You never did.”

His father looked cut up, which hurt him in a way he wasn’t expecting. Felix turned away from him.

“I don’t think I’ve ever treated you like an adult, have I?”

That wasn’t exactly what he expected to hear. Felix shrugged. He wanted out of this house and he wasn’t going to have a fucking moment with his father. Sylvain was somewhere nearby, getting his own things ready. Good. Hurry the fuck up.

“You haven’t been a kid for so long, Felix. I. After Glenn, I don’t know. I didn’t want to lose you, too. But I did. You can’t tell me things, you can’t…I’m sorry”

His father wasn’t making much sense, but he could get the gist of it. He handled it wrong, he was seeing it. Felix was too mad to really comment on any of that. He could easily snap at his father, but something was holding him back. Maybe he didn’t want to talk about this when he was already mad and would make things worse. Maybe he didn’t want to hurt him, either. He had no idea. He just knew he wanted to get out of here. What his father said could wait.

“I can’t,” he agreed. He bit his lip. “You went to Dimitri first. I never forgot that.”

“Felix…”

“I accept your apology,” he said. “But that’s all.”

His father seemed surprised and, admittedly, Felix was a bit himself. It came out fairly even and calm, despite how mad he was.

Sylvain reappeared in the foyer and Felix felt the anger return. He needed to get out of here. Again and again that repeated in his mind. He had to  _ leave. _

“Let’s go.” To his father he muttered, “Bye.”

He nodded. “Bye.”

Then it was back out into the cold. Felix dealt with Sylvain’s car all the way back home. Sylvain didn’t speak to him, except to tell him that he was getting a bottle of water when they stopped for gas and if he wanted anything. Felix just shook his head and watched the attendant pump gas into the car from the window so he didn’t have to look at him.

His father’s words echoed in his head. He actually said “sorry.” Felix didn’t know what to do with that information, especially after everything with Sylvain. Sylvain. Needless to say, he was pretty sure that their relationship was over again. Shit. Something about that unsettled Felix deep in the pit of his stomach.

When they got back to the apartment, the light was on under Ingrid’s door, but she didn’t come out to greet them. Good. He knew she would walk out, take a look at them and go, “Which one of you fucked it up this time?”

“I’m going to go to bed,” Felix said.

Sylvain didn’t offer to join him. Just as well. He kept his eyes off of him as he walked into his room. As he closed the door.

\--

Sylvain rather liked The Outsiders. Their music was the typical alt-punk fare, but there was something unique about them. It was probably the charisma of their lead singer, Claude. He commanded the stage like a pro. He wasn’t overtly sexual like Sylvain knew he himself was, but he exuded this  _ energy  _ that rippled through the thrashing bodies of the crowd.

He stood back towards the bar with Ingrid. He knew she notoriously hated mosh pits. Something about too many sweaty bodies and pointed joints. Part of Sylvain wanted to sod that and throw himself into the belly of the beast. Let the crowd rough him up. But he refrained. What Ingrid hated more than mosh pits was being stranded at gigs. When they used to go to shows in their teens, she always got mad when the three of them would disappear on her, leaving her holding half-drunk plastic cups full of illegally purchased beer or a stack of coats.

Ingrid was watching the stage with rapt fascination. He wasn’t sure if there was something going on with Raphael and Ingrid, but he could tell that she wanted there to be. With Ingrid, it was tricky. He loved her and they had slept together once, but they weren’t  _ in love _ with each other. Never were. Same with her and Felix. Once again, he thought about the time Dorothea asked how bad the break-up of BOAR was and Sylvain had said, “Fleetwood Mac.” She’d laughed until she realized he was serious. Ingrid didn’t really date, and he wondered if she was another version of him and Felix. Of being never able to figure out how emotionally fucked she was, but. She had it better off than they did. Maybe. Hopefully.

“What’s going on with you and Felix?”

Sylvain shrugged. He didn’t want to look at her. He focused on Claude holding the microphone up to their guitar player, Marianne, and letting her sing part of the chorus in her soft, breathy voice.

“I have no idea,” he said.

From what he gathered, Felix wasn’t talking to him. He was mad and. For all his rages and tantrums, Sylvain knew he was in the wrong. He had gotten drunk and blurted out secrets of their past. He had cocked up their relationship. Again. Like he was trying to get a card punched.

_ Fuck up your and Felix’s relationship ten times and get a free coffee! _

“You also aren’t drinking.”

Ingrid gave him a significant look and he shrugged again.

“Don’t feel like it.”

“You? Don’t feel like drinking?”

“Yeah.”

Sylvain kept watching Claude. He and their bassist, Hilda, were sharing the mic. She shoved him playfully and he moved back to the middle of the stage. He seemed to be sending his energy out at them all, but Sylvain knew where it was truly directed. He saw Claude throw a wink right to the lip of the stage where wunderkind solo artist, Petra Macneary, stood. It was obvious. These lyrics were for her. This song was for her. Love. The real kind. Did Sylvain even know what that was?

It made sense that he fucked things up again. That was what he was good at. Fucking and fucking things up. But. If he kept saying he was useless or a fuck up, it gave him an excuse to keep being self-destructive. Sylvain raked a hand through his hair. He felt weird and out of sorts and maybe it was because he wasn’t drinking. But he decided on sobriety tonight. If he couldn’t make it even one night…

So he made excuses for himself to continue spiraling. Sylvain had no idea how to change. He had been like this for as long as he could remember. Self-deprecating and wallowing in his own perceived uselessness. But what was that? His own mis-wired brain? His abuse from his brother? Self-made self-destruction?

These confusing thoughts dogged him through the second half of the set and, before he knew it, the show was over and the band was mingling around the bar for the after-party.

“Hey!”

Raphael was easy to spot in the crowd. He wasn’t that much taller than Sylvain, but he was huge. He easily could have easily been a linebacker on a football team instead of the drummer of a punk band. He made his way over to them.

“You made it!” His grin was wide and it must have been infectious, because Ingrid was smiling back.

“I said I would,” Ingrid said back. “That solo you were working on. It was good. Not like ‘Moby Dick’ at all.”

“Y’think?” Raphael mussed up his blonde hair with one, big hand.

“Totally.”

They were only talking about drumming, but Sylvain could see more. The air between the two of them was charged. A spark. Ingrid might not have noticed it, but he did. Sylvain reached out and placed his hand on the crook of Ingrid’s arm.

“Hey, I’m gonna head back to our place.”

This bar wasn’t far from their apartment, maybe a seven block walk. Sylvain preferred bar shows. Easier than making it out to basement shows where they’d typically have to drive.

To Raphael he said, “You guys were great.”

“Hey, thanks!”

Sylvain turned and picked up his coat from where he had thrown it over the stool behind him. He moved through the crowd until he was outside. He slipped his arms in his coat and flipped the collar up. He tugged his knit cap on, pulling it down over his ears. Outside, it was the wet kind of cold only the city could provide. Sylvain started walking, shoving his bare hands in his pockets. The air smelled like fumes and garbage. Up above, a combination of clouds and light pollution kept him from seeing any stars.

He felt a kind of melancholy stirring in the pit of his stomach, one he couldn’t quite explain. No, that wasn’t right. He  _ could _ explain it, but he didn’t want to.

By the time he reached the second block on his lonely walk home, it began to snow.

\--

There was always a buzz before a show. Nerves, gas, whatever. The air was charged with a kind of energy that they hoped to channel out into the crowd. Sylvain knew that wasn’t the case this time. The tension had nothing to do with the fact that the band they were on the bill with was finishing up and Killing Edge was about to go out.

Dorothea seemed to sense it, because she sighed and shook her head. Sylvain wondered why she was here, sometimes. She could do better than their lot, but she stuck around despite it all. Ingrid awkwardly spun one of her sticks on one hand, worrying her lower lip with her teeth.

Felix wasn’t looking at him, of course. He would have preferred that he lost it at him and strike like he always did. The silence was worse. He was bent over, tuning his guitar last minute, probably just for something to do. Sylvain swallowed the liquor from his bottle and frowned. His stint with sobriety had lasted three days and now here he was, drinking gin and juice before a show. Whatever. Fuck it. He was a fuck-up. May as well embrace it. He was down with his demons.

Bernadetta was looking at him again, holding his old bass. He didn’t know what to say to her. Instead, he looked away and threw his empty bottle somewhere near the garbage can. Felix gave him a dirty look before picking it up and throwing it in. Sylvain didn’t know what to do there, either. He grinned, which he knew was the wrong response, and he waited for Felix’s snarl, for his verbal barb.

All he got was a scowl. He wasn’t even worth Felix’s words.

The show itself was a blur. Sylvain went through the motions, fueled by booze, and sang his lines. Harmonized with Dorothea. Held the mic stand out like it was his erection. He was a proper fucking frontman. Afterwards, he acknowledged the applause before throwing himself into the arms of his demons.

_ Fuck it. _

He wasn’t sure how much he had to drink or how many varieties of alcohol he mixed. All he knew was that his vision was blurred, the world was tilting, and his mouth tasted vile. People were touching at him, patting his shoulder. He was wasted enough to not even flinch.

Somehow, he ended up outside, too drunk to even be cold even in just his flannel, propped up against the outside of the bar.

“Sylvain?”

He blearily lifted his head and closed one eye to focus. Bernadetta toyed with the overly long sleeves of her sweatshirt and her knees in their striped socks knocked together from the cold.

“Heyyy,” he drawled.

Sylvain moved to get off of the wall but he stumbled and fell forward. Bernadetta caught him, grunting a bit from the effort of holding him up. He opened his mouth to thank her, but instead ended up vomiting all over the sidewalk, just narrowly missing her thrifted Fluevog shoes. Bernadetta jerked at the sound of it and nearly dropped him. They both went down on the icy sidewalk, with Sylvain mostly breaking her fall.

“Bernadetta, you okay?” he managed.

“No!”

She got off of him and stood before him, looking angrier than he had ever seen her. Sylvain rolled over on the sidewalk and propped himself up on his elbows. He didn’t trust himself enough to stand yet. Part of his hair nearly touched the puddle of his own vomit that was close enough to his face for him to be able to smell it.

“You got me in this band!” she said. Her voice cracked a bit as she spoke and her hands were balled in fists. “You came and convinced me to be in a band and I was scared, so scared, but you seemed to see something in me so I did it. And I like it! I like playing bass and I like hearing my words reach people, but Sylvain!”

Bernadetta shook her head. Her entire body was vibrating. He knew she was prone to yelping when her anxiety spiked, but she never went off like this.

“I can trust you with my words, but I can’t trust you as a person. You’re always drinking or messing things up with other people. And it sucks! It sucks so much, because I want to trust you. I want to believe you’re the guy who found me at that bookstore and encouraged me. The guy who taught me bass. But instead I just see this...this loser!”

There were tears in her eyes when Bernadetta ran back into the bar. Sylvain let his head fall back, nearly smacking it on the sidewalk. He looked up at the swirl of buildings, at the flashing red light of a plane high above him. His brain felt like spin art or mush, but her words broke through.

He thought about Felix’s blow up at Rodrigue’s house. Because Sylvain fucked up. Bernadetta now, because Sylvain fucked up. He was the constant. It was all on him. His behavior and actions were his own. Not his perceived fucked-up nature. Not his past with his brother. He had to take responsibility and change. But, right now, he was too drunk to figure out how. And that was part of it, wasn’t it? Fuck.

Slowly, he got himself to his feet and back against the exterior of the bar. Self-reflection would have to be put on hold until his mind didn’t feel like a cocktail shaker. Right now he just had to figure out a way home. The rest could wait. Not for much longer, but for now. He had to own up to it. He had to figure out what to do.

\--

Felix lost sight of Sylvain, but he told himself that he didn’t care. He didn’t know why he bothered. Why some part of him clung to an inane hope that this would be the time that they actually made it. It was pathetic and useless. Sylvain could go on running his mouth, go on fucking himself up, but Felix wasn’t going to pick up the pieces. He could hardly deal with his own, fractured self most days. His anger and rages. His “attitude.”

Right now, though, he pretended none of that mattered. Sylvain was somewhere, probably fucking someone up against a wall or snorting lines off of the curve someone’s ass, and Felix was here, talking to Ashe Ubert-Gaspard about music. Ashe’s eyes took on an almost supernatural glow when he talked, his hands moving as if they were shaping the words while he spoke.

“I really liked Throat’s stuff back when they were together.”

Felix nodded along. Ashe was kind of annoying, but his passion was endearing. He loved music with his whole chest, it seemed, the way he talked about his favorite groups. He reminded Felix a bit of himself when he was more idealistic, combing through old record stores with his brother and Dimitri. Ashe seemed to know every local band and a lot of underground groups from elsewhere that even Felix hadn’t heard of.

“The drummer is in Mockingbird now, did you hear?” Ashe continued. “Their shows are...uh, wow…”

His cheeks tinted the slightest bit red and, right. Felix had heard about Mockingbird’s shows. The things Yuri LeClerc did onstage made Sylvain’s antics look like church.

He wasn’t entirely sure why Ashe was talking to him, but it was nice to have an easy conversation about something he cared about. No shouting, no tension, no storming off.

So of course someone had to ruin it.

Felix was aware of someone coming up behind them and he almost didn’t turn. His body was poised, all of a sudden, for a confrontation. Like it knew something he didn’t. He expected it to be Sylvain, but he didn’t smell booze or sweat or hear the slightly labored breathing he tended to develop when he spun out of control on various substances. He turned and scowled. Dimitri stood there, not quite in but not quite out of the conversation, like a boy band on the turn of the millennium. Felix turned back to Ashe.

“I’m heading out.”

Ashe seemed surprised, but he nodded. He was in the same band as Dimitri, after all. He had to know a little of what was so tense with them.

Felix shoved his way backstage to where he left his coat and slammed the side door open. This bar was more out of the way, but he figured there were ways for him to get a ride. Of fucking  _ course _ Dimitri had to show up. Felix had had a shitty week and now it was going to get shittier.

It had snowed a few days ago, but most of it melted by now. Brownish gray clumps were clotted on street corners or by trash bags, but that was all. The streets were still slick, glistening in the streetlights and the neon from shop signs. It was late enough that most cars were off the road, but there were still a few. Felix could hear the  _ whoosh _ of their tires over the cold, set ground, and feel the momentary heat of headlights on his back before they passed.

“Felix!”

He picked up the pace, not turning around.

“Felix!”

The voice was closer now. Of course. Dimitri was a good bit taller than him so  _ of course _ he could easily catch him. Just like Sylvain. It was always like this. Felix wasn’t even that short. He and Ashe had stood eye to eye, but he had the misfortune of being surrounded by giants. Fed up, he whirled around. Dimitri was close enough that the end of Felix’s ponytail whipped at his chest.

“What do you want?” he demanded.

“I just...what is it, Felix? What did I do to you that makes you act like this whenever I breathe the same air as you?!”

Dimitri looked wounded and sad, like a kicked puppy. They had stopped in front of a closed storefront that kept its green neon lights on and it cast a sickly green color over Dimitri’s pale hair and skin.

“Are you fucking  _ kidding _ me?”

He looked taken aback, as if Felix had slapped him. Good. He wasn’t done.

“Everything has always been about you!” he snapped. “It’s always been The Dimitri Show! ‘Oh, how does Dimitri feel about this?’ ‘What does Dimitri think about this?’ even my own brother’s death was about you!”

He widened his eye, both eyebrows shooting up into his messy blonde hair.

“Felix, that isn’t fair! Or true!”

“Bullshit!” He stamped his foot, the sound of his boot sole echoing off of the cold, empty street. What cars there were seemed to be gone or parked. It was almost as if they cleared off, wanting not to distract him and Dimitri at all.

“My father went to you first! You! Because it’s Dimitri’s world and we’re all living in it, right?” he sneered.

The anger was back and it felt good to let it loose. To let it erupt. Obliterate him.

“The band’s break-up was even about you.”

Dimitri dropping his guitar on the ground and storming out in tears. Leaving the three of them staring after him, not sure what to do. Felix had felt the anger, even then, felt it roiling in the pit of his stomach.

“That wasn’t just me! It was all four of us!”

Felix crossed his arms and cocked his head to the side.

“Then why are me, Ingrid, and Sylvain still in a band?”

Dimitri flinched again as if each statement Felix made was another slap to the face.

“I left to get therapy!” he said, throwing his arms out. “I was hating who I was becoming. How I was reacting! What I was doing to the band.”

Tears welled up in the eye that Felix could see and he made himself look away. He sucked at eye contact and, anyway, he wasn’t going to let tears sway him.

“I’m in recovery and I’m...I’m doing well. I even talked to Sylvain about it a couple years back,” Dimitri said. “But I don’t think he remembered.”

“No shit, he was probably fucked up when you told him. Big surprise.”

He didn’t let Dimitri’s statement stop him. Hearing Sylvain brought up, even if he had originally brought him up himself, made him angrier.

“It’s always been about you. You do everything I do and then get more attention for it. I come out and six months later, you do and your father throws you a goddamn party. I learn guitar and you do, too, and my brother kisses your ass. It’s annoying. And I’m sick of it. I’m sick of you. I’m sick of everything!”

Dimitri stared at him, wax-faced and doused in green. Felix felt memories intrude, then. He and Dimitri in the convenience store, sharing their Slurpee and sticking their tongues out at each other to see who could make theirs more blue with each sip. Dimitri teasing him about his crush on Sylvain. He and Dimitri sitting on overturned milk crates, looking at a scribbled mess on a piece of smoothed out notebook paper that somehow showed three chords. He clenched his jaw. He didn’t care. He wanted anger, he wanted obliteration.

“I’m sorry!” Dimitri said, voice loud and sharp. It echoed around them. “I’m sorry, Felix!”

“OKAY!” he yelled back.

Their voices reverberated around them, drowned out only by a taxi driving down the slick road. The lights illuminated Dimitri’s face and Felix had to squint against the brightness of it all. Then it was gone and the green was back.

“Okay,” he repeated, more quietly this time.

He hadn’t expected Dimitri to apologize. Maybe he  _ was _ in recovery or whatever. Taking accountability. Maybe Felix could...use some of that. Knowing it wasn’t Dimitri’s fault his brother died and actively not holding it against him were two different things. Dimitri didn’t control Felix’s father’s reaction.

“Okay,” Dimitri said back.

He watched him swallow. Dimitri gave a short nod of his head and turned around. He walked back towards the bar. Felix stared at his retreating back. He didn’t think any of that solved or resolved anything, but something had shifted. Maybe he wouldn’t tell Dimitri to fuck off the next time he saw him.

\--

Sylvain leaned out of the open window, propping his elbows on the sill. Ingrid had strict rules about him smoking in the house. He lit his cigarette and pushed his face out to the cold. It was gray and wet out. It wanted to storm, though. The sky was swollen and dirty, waiting to rupture. It was too warm to snow, but still cold enough that the damp air made Sylvain shiver.

He puffed miserably on his cigarette and tried to center his thoughts. Felix’s explosion outside his father’s house and the way Bernadetta snapped at him. They were right. Sylvain had behaved horribly. He had been shit and not just then. For years.

And why?

He always called himself a fuck-up. Always. Even before he was popping pills or drinking himself into a stupor on most nights. Sylvain thought about how his parents treated him and how it made his brother pound the shit out of him. How he still flinched when most people initiated physical contact with him.

He always talked about not fully being able to blame Miklan for resenting him. That he somehow thought he deserved it just because he was born. He justified Miklan’s abuse, just as he justified his own self-abuse. He was always making excuses: for himself, for his brother. He could get completely blotto, because he was Sylvain Jose Gautier: a born fuck-up. He fueled his own self-destruction.

And then there was Felix.

He’d seen to that, too, hadn’t he? His damn mouth, because he was drunk. Felix’s words echoed in his head about how he was always loaded. And he was right. He cared about him, that much was certain, but he never thought they could last. Because there it was again. Sylvain expected to fuck it up so he did. Felix expected to get mad so he did. Maybe if they got out of their own ways, they could have a go at it, but how could he even bring that up?

Sylvain’s cigarette was nearly ash and he pulled himself back in. He ground it into a Dolly Parton ashtray that sat on their kitchen table that was solely so Sylvain would stop putting cigarettes out on the windowsill and dropped the butt into the trash.

Could he and Felix have a real go at it? Put their history and baggage aside and just be happy? Sylvain had to admit that he was always happy with him when they were together. He felt light, especially at the beginning, before the looming spectre of his own spiraling brought him back down.

He dropped into one of the kitchen chairs and frowned, glancing over at the window, now closed.

If they  _ could _ have a go at it, Sylvain knew he needed to change. He had to stop getting fucked up so often.

“Heh,” he said out loud. “Right.”

Self-deprecation aside, he  _ knew _ himself. He couldn’t go cold turkey. He would just cut back. Curb his more intense demons. No drugs, minimal drinking. That was an adequate start, right? Maybe later he could examine full sobriety, but this he could do. If he wasn’t willing to do this for himself, for Felix, then what was even the point?

Sylvain fiddled with the open box of cigarettes next to the ashtray, but he didn’t take another out. He could do it. He could try. For himself. For Felix. Because he thought they could make it if they didn’t let all the shit--their own and others’--get in the way. He hoped so, anyway. Because he loved him.

Love. He was in love with Felix. Probably had been his entire life. The realization of that settled over his bones as he sat there in silence.

“Fuck.”

\--

Felix ended the call and stared at his phone screen until it went dark. In it, he saw a ghostly reflection of himself and he bit the side of his lip. The phone call had gone...well. His father had apologized again. He had admitted to handling things poorly. It was almost touching. A real movie moment. Cue credits, cue vomiting.

Oh, but that wasn’t fair.

Felix thought that maybe he could start letting his father back in, slowly. Maybe he wouldn’t be so snappish. Not just to him, but everyone. He didn’t have to court anger as much. He would have to find other outlets. Somehow.

“Very slowly,” he said aloud, watching his reflection’s lips move.

He didn’t wholly forgive his father, but he figured that he might not ever. Some things simply couldn’t be forgiven, after all. But this was a start. Or something. Same with Dimitri. He hadn’t seen him since their confrontation on the street, but he wasn’t going to be so rude to him. He  _ was _ trying to get better. Maybe Felix could start to let go of that old resentment and get better, too. Again, he wasn’t sure of the “somehow.” Maybe he needed outside help, the way Dimitri had. Someone to talk to about the hot, metallic anger that he was so quick to jump to. But that was a thought for a future time. Not something he would dismiss, but something to just keep in mind for later.

For now, Felix just sat on the floor, his back against his mattress, thinking. His father, Dimitri...Sylvain. He thought back to that time in the diner, how it was almost a date. Felix had felt good. He gave a slight smile to himself and didn’t immediately fight to turn it back into a scowl. He dug his hand into the purple bag of Takis propped up against his mattress and stuffed a handful of them into his mouth.

“Fee?”

He heard Sylvain’s voice from the living room. His first instinct was to yell at him to leave. The second was to stay quiet and let him think he wasn’t home. Felix looked at the Felix in the dark phone screen again and shook his head. He ignored both instincts.

“In my room,” he called, swallowing.

The door wasn’t closed all the way so Sylvain could just push it open. He looked good, Felix thought. Better than he had seen him since before the holidays. He was in a Joy Division shirt and a black and red flannel and his jeans were torn, even though they were in January now and it was still getting colder.

“Can I sit?” he asked, raking a hand through his hair.

Felix watched his fingers card through the messy red strands and nodded. Sylvain came to sit next to him, careful not to touch him. There was a good foot of space between them. Felix looked at the worn carpet spread between them as if it were a gulf. He scooted closer.

“Hey,” Sylvain said.

“I was on the phone with my dad,” Felix said.

He saw Sylvain’s eyebrows raise in surprise.

“Oh. How’d that go?”

He shrugged.

“Weirdly okay. I guess I don’t know him as much as he doesn’t know me.”

“That’s how it always is with parents.” Sylvain paused. “Well, most parents. Probably not mine.”

He gave a soft, awkward chuckle. Felix placed his phone down on the ground.

“I’m quitting,” Sylvain said.

He lifted his head and looked at Felix’s walls. They weren’t as adorned as the walls of his room back home, but there were still things to look at. Old fliers advertising Killing Edge’s performances, a poster from  _ Double Indemnity, _ a wall scroll he had found at an anime store in the city.

“The band?” Felix asked.

He didn’t mean for his voice to sound small, but the words felt choked coming out. His throat clenched. Sylvain couldn’t be quitting. The three of them were entwined, like it or not. To his relief, he shook his head.

“No, just. Most shit. I’m not going cold turkey but I’m scaling back. A lot. I wanted you to know.”

This was actually huge, but Felix didn’t know how to react. He drew in a deep breath through his nose and nodded.

“Okay,” he said. “Okay.”

Silence stretched between them, seconds feeling like minutes. Felix swallowed. He reached into the bag of Takis but his fingers only hit crumbs. He swore it had been full when he had started the phone call with his father. He retracted his hand and wiped his fingers on his pant leg.

“I’m doing it for me,” Sylvain continued, “and the band but...also for you.”

“Me?”

“You, us. Y’know.”

“Do I?”

Sylvain chanced a slight smile. “I think you do.”

He did, didn’t he? He loved Sylvain. He had always known that, even if he denied it. It was why he kept going back to him, why he kept hoping even when cynicism told him otherwise. But what did that mean? Love wasn’t just words, it was work. And were they willing to put that in? Felix was just realizing that coping with anger was bad and that he might need therapy. Sylvain was talking about sobering up. Life wasn’t that easy, it wasn’t a movie moment, the kind Felix had just mocked earlier. And they certainly didn’t make it easy on themselves  _ or _ each other. Trying had to count for something, though. It wouldn’t be destructive like before. Felix, for all his cynicism, clung to that bit of hope.

“I love you, Fee.”

He felt like there was a tiny hand at his throat, holding it closed. Felix looked at his glossy, black and white poster, and then back at Sylvain.

“I love you, too.”

The words hung between them. They were heavy and not going anywhere.

“So what do we do?” Sylvain asked.

Felix shrugged.

“I have no fucking clue.”

They laughed together and it was like salt water on a cut. Felix leaned over and kissed him lightly. Sylvain’s hand came up to cup his face and he kissed him back.

“Your lips are spicy,” he mumbled against his lips when they parted. “And your breath stinks like Takis.”

“Don’t ruin it,” Felix said back. Then he kissed him again.

The sex after that was different. They took their time, they kissed more. Sylvain murmured into his mouth while his fingers were inside him. Felix clung to his neck, kissing him again and again. He fit his fingers into the spaces between Sylvain’s ribs when he plunged into him again and again. He watched Sylvain’s eyelids flutter when he came, Felix’s name on his lips. He let himself be rocked by his own orgasm, amazing at how hard it hit. When they finished and Felix came back from going to the bathroom, he laid with him, letting Sylvain spoon him from behind.

Felix felt lighter than before--the tiny hand was gone. Lying like this, basking in the afterglow, he thought that maybe they could make it.

\--

Sylvain wasn’t used to the sun--no. He wasn’t used to the sun  _ sober. _ He kept a nocturnal schedule and spent any time during the day mostly strung out or still fucked up. But that was the point of this.

The light was weird and harsh in the city, silver and slick and cold. Watery sunlight broke through the clouds and everything seemed alien. Or maybe it was just to his clogged but not clouded mind. Fuck.

Felix leaned against him, hand in a visor over his eyes as if he wasn’t sure what to do with this light either. He never got anywhere near as fucked up as Sylvain got on the regular, but daytime was still a novelty to him, too. They stayed up late and slept later, waking usually as the sun was on its descent.

He was holding Felix’s hand, and he couldn’t think of the last time they had done that. Sylvain wracked his brain, trying to think of a moment where they were like this, almost like a real couple. Maybe sitting next to him on those nasty, static-producing yellow plastic chairs, waiting for Felix’s name to be called. And how afterwards, Sylvain had bought him a taco from a food truck as if that would make things better but Felix had just picked the jalapeños out to eat and then threw the rest away. But that couldn’t be right. There had to be other times.

He used to think that Felix knew he was special, because Sylvain always let him initiate. He never let other people touch him first. A touch could be a surprise, it could be a slap or a grasp around the arm. A punch to the face or an accidental push down the stairs. Even Ingrid, someone he’s known just as long, he made the first move. He trusted her, would die for her probably, but there was a trepidation. She never really made the first move, anyway, with anyone. Maybe that was his fault, too. Maybe they all should have thought before falling into bed with one another. But they had all been so young. Too young.

“What do you want to do?” he asked.

Felix made a little face. He drew his brows in and wrinkled his nose a little and Sylvain knew that face. He wanted to say something pissy. Maybe about why it had to be  _ his _ choice for a date activity and so if they didn’t like it, Sylvain could blame him. He waited for it, expected it. He kind of liked it, really, when Felix ran his mouth. Not about things that mattered, not when he would rant about Dimitri about things he didn’t know hit home with Sylvain as well. Not when he threw every one of his faults in his face on a suburban street under the judgmental beaming of a streetlight. But he liked when he was sarcastic or rude, even towards him. His features smoothed out and he gave a little shrug, so small that Sylvain almost didn’t notice it if not for the slight rustle of his track jacket moving against the denim one he wore over it.

“I don’t know,” he said.

What a fucking pair they made, he thought. Sylvain had his reputation. Bernadetta’s words still rang through his head, mustered up with all of her courage to tell them to him. She was right. He was burning out. When he was a teenager, he remembered standing on the pool table in someone’s basement, holding a bottle in his hand, saying asinine quotes.  _ Live fast, die young, leave a good-looking corpse. _ Maybe he believed that back then, but now? Now he had resolve. He didn’t know if he could last, but he was going to try.

“What about food?”

“Sure.”

The response was easy enough and Sylvain was seized with a good idea. Down around the corner was a roundup for whatever local food trucks could fit along the street. It was thoroughfare never frequented by cars due to how crowded the street was, where people could meander in and out of stores and get food handed to them from a window. That, at least, eliminated indecision.

They walked, hand in hand, and no one really paid them mind. A couple people, nosy people, gave them a double take, but Felix just scowled at them until they turned away. Sylvain laughed and he turned the corner feeling a bit better.

He  _ knew _ Felix. This was a new frontier but he still knew Felix. Knew he liked spicy food and not sweet food. Knew that he didn’t like the texture of ground beef so he always got steak or chicken in his tacos. A hazy memory surfaced of Felix’s face above him because Sylvain was on the floor, fucked up out of his mind. How Felix didn’t look angry, just kind of sad. The sort of look he rarely saw him adopt since Glenn died.

Sylvain stopped on the sidewalk and pulled him close up to his side. Felix wriggled like a cat.

“What are you doing?”

Wasn’t that the question? Sylvain looked down towards him.

“I don’t know. I just don’t want to let you go. Is that weird?”

“Yes.”

The answer he should have expected. Sylvain laughed, a bit more harshly than he meant. He released him and Felix broke the hold of their hands to cross his arms.

“I don’t know what I’m doing,” Felix said, his expression softening slightly.

“And you think I do?”

Felix’s mouth twisted in a bit of a scowl before he relaxed his lips. “I guess you’re right.”

This wasn’t the place to have a deep talk, Sylvain knew. They couldn’t have another heart to heart smelling exhaust fumes from too many idling food trucks and being jostled by people on their lunch breaks. He reached his hand out and Felix hesitated only for a moment before lacing his fingers with his.

“I’m feeling like falafel--what do you want?”

It wasn’t what he really had to say, but it worked for now. Felix seemed to get this because he gave a fair approximation of a smile.

“I think that one taco truck is here that has the spicy chicken I like,” he said.

He squeezed Sylvain’s hand, maybe without even realizing he did. It felt good. Sylvain squeezed him back.

\--

“I have an announcement,” Sylvain said.

Ingrid turned from where she and Dorothea were having a conversation and made a face.

“If it’s about how you and Felix are back together now, don’t worry, I already know. The walls in our apartment are thin.”

Felix stuck his tongue out at her, but didn’t say more. He was trying to snap less. He also was in an incredibly good mood. During their sound check earlier that day, he had started playing the theme from  _ The Flintstones _ partway through and Dorothea had said, “Wow, Felix got his groove back,” prompting Ingrid to respond with, “Did he have a groove before?”

Tonight, they were having a show on their own. Two full sets. It was going to be long, but Sylvain felt up to it. His mind was clearer, and he was in a pretty good mood himself.

“This will be our last show as Killing Edge.”

Bernadetta looked panicked.

“Wait, is this about the name or are we breaking up?” she asked, eyes wide with worry.

Sylvain gave her a comforting smile.

“The name.”

He saw her body droop as she let out a relieved sigh.

“Oh, thank God,” Dorothea said. “I always hated that name.”

Felix had come up with it, because of course he did. Sylvain had never felt one way or the other, but he always felt like it was at least better than BOAR.

“I thought of a more positive name,” he said. “Ruined Sky.”

_ “That’s _ more positive?” Dorothea asked, cocking a brow.

She and Ingrid exchanged a look. Felix already knew of the name change and didn’t say anything. Sylvain could tell, though, that he likely agreed with them.

“I like it,” Bernadetta said.

She fiddled with the strap of Sylvain’s old bass and gave a smile. She never confronted him again, but he knew that she noticed what positive changes Sylvain was starting to make.

“It  _ is _ a better name,” Dorothea admitted.

Felix nodded. “That’s what I told him.”

He gave Sylvain a slight smile and Sylvain gave one back. Ingrid looked between them and her shoulders dropped that crucial inch. She seemed to be breathing easier with him and Felix finally on the same page after all these years. But that couldn’t be the only reason. Sylvain locked eyes with her and gave a grin. He pointed at his own neck and waggled his eyebrows. Ingrid immediately flushed crimson and slapped her hand over a sizable love bite on her neck. It seemed that she and Raphael weren’t just talking about drumming anymore. Dorothea and Felix noticed and laughed.

“Don’t any of you start!” Ingrid said indignantly.

Even Bernadetta was laughing now.

“Alright, let’s get ready to go out.”

Ingrid lowered her hand from her neck and stuck it out in front of her. Sylvain followed suit, putting his hand over top of hers. Dorothea and Bernadetta exchanged a shrug before they put their hands in, too. Felix was the last to join, his hand on the top of the stack.

“What is this?” Dorothea asked.

“I don’t know,” Ingrid admitted. “It felt like a good idea.”

From his spot near the bottom, Sylvain pumped his arm up and down slowly.

“Quack, quack, quack, quack,” he began chanting.

Felix rolled his eyes.

“C’mon, Fee. Do some motivational bullshit with us. Goonies never say die!”

“Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose,” Ingrid said, laughing.

Dorothea looked aghast.

“I don’t think I can handle you all when you aren’t self-destructing and yelling.”

“We’re all standing here like assholes,” Felix groused. “Can we just go on?”

With that, they split apart. The girls headed out towards the stage first, but Sylvain held Felix back. He knew that they both had a lot of work to do, on their own as well as together, but they were trying. For the first time in their bumpy, up and down relationship, they were trying to make things better. That had to count for something. And life was like that. It wasn’t to be tied up in a nice, neat bow. But, Sylvain thought they had a decent shot at happiness if they kept going. He wasn’t used to such optimism, but maybe it was his clearer head. They really could be okay.

He took Felix’s hands in both of his and kissed his knuckles.

“Let’s go,” he said throatily.

Felix nodded. “Yeah.”

Sylvain didn’t let go of his hand. He wanted to wrap an arm around his waist and hold him close, but Felix already had his guitar on and it was difficult enough already to maneuver through the narrow hallway of the basement bar where the show was. Felix kept holding onto his hand, though, as they walked out together onstage.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Everyone I've Ever Loved Is Full Of Ghosts](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29451384) by [donniedont](https://archiveofourown.org/users/donniedont/pseuds/donniedont)




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